Looney Bin Round-Up

Dennis Prager sez, “The Left is hysterical.” Example A: They said that Bush mislead the American public about reasons for the war in Iraq. Which, clearly, is crazy, given that the president told us from the get-go that we were going in because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and we all now see that… oh wait.
Barack Obama is insane for wanting poor people to not be poor.

Mike Adams says, “If you get a gun, it’ll make you feel like more of a man. It worked for me, at least.” And yes, he actually does end his column with the phrase, “Welcome to my world.”

well, a woman who thinks individuals can live in this country for 13,500 a year is insane. its just enough to keep people poor. which unfortunately, is actually what those government programs do. i am not saying there shouldnt be government programs, just better ones.

thanks for the roundup.

Jon C.

September 27, 2005 at 2:34 pm

I don’t see what’s wierd or objectionable about the Mike Adams column. Nowhere in there does he say, as Jill has quoted him, anything about guns making him feel like more of a man. The main point of his column seems to be that shooting is a fun hobby, something on which millions of men and women would agree with him.

For a scholarly treatment of racism, or the lack thereof, in the GOP, see this article.

The only thing I was quoting him on was his last line. I thought it was clear that the first point was a joke, summarizing his general view on life (which he expresses weekly in his ridiculous columns).

As for the GOP’s lack of racism, well… I’m not even gonna get into here. Let’s just say that our opinions on this differ substantially.

Jo

September 27, 2005 at 2:44 pm

Is Rebecca Hagelin on The Washington Times payroll? (Wouldn’t surprise me if she was.) That piece was more Tony Blankley quotes than original content…though I can’t really say which is worse. :(

Jon C.

September 27, 2005 at 2:48 pm

Fair enough, I guess I was confused by the quotation marks and the preceding “Mike Adams says…”

As far as differing opinions that’s fine, but as the article I linked to makes clear, it’s not even a long shot that “all evidence” points to Republicans being racist. If we’re going to talk about “history” we shouldn’t gloss over which party it was that opposed civil rights well into the 60’s. Granted, there have and always will be racists on both sides, but I always find it kind of a low blow to characterize an entire party, either one, as being racist.

If the Southern strategy meant that the GOP was racist, then it means the Democratic party is equally racist, since they’ve fought hard for those same Southern white votes.

Was the South more racist, or less racist, forty years ago? Seems pretty clear to me that it was more racist back then. And 40 years ago, the South was solidly Democratic. Now that the region has improved, and is continuing to improve, the Republicans have electoral dominance.

I’m not denying the racist history of the Democratic party. Hell, this whole country has a racist history, and continues to be deeply racist. This isn’t a “Democrats are perfect and Republicans are racist jerks” argument. America is a country with serious race issues. I’ll call Dems out on it too if they write columns about how they never used racist tactics to get votes. My point, though, is that in more recent history, the Republican party has used racism and fear of blacks to garner votes in the South. Saying “Dems did it too” doesn’t excuse its denial.

Sally

September 27, 2005 at 2:56 pm

I don’t think that anyone is denying that the Democrats were racist forty years ago, Robert. (Some of us don’t think they’re so great now.) I think the rest of us have noticed that as the Democrats denounced racism, and as the Republicans tacitly embraced it, the Republicans picked up a lot of white votes, and not just in the South.

Rob

September 27, 2005 at 3:02 pm

Why are his columns ridiculous? He mainly points to hypocrisy, cronyism, and dishonesty among the liberal elites at the university he teaches at. Replace “liberal” with “conservative” if you need a proper lens…

…and, Jon, that’s the point. If the idea that one party is entirely racist is repeated enough, it will become the Truth. Look, it’s happening already. How many news stories have you seen since the hurricanes that have implied, if not outright declared, racism?

Rob

September 27, 2005 at 3:08 pm

My point, though, is that in more recent history, the Republican party has used racism and fear of blacks to garner votes in the South.

Jill, who said that “Bush is bringing back the draft” during the last election? Not “might bring back the draft”, but “it’s coming”. This on the heels of Rangel telling the country that the military is full of poor, black kids and account disproportionally for the war dead. Then, he sponsored the draft legislation. Also, show me where you said Rangel was a lying sack for doing this…

I am very glad that I stumbled across your blog, coming over from the Raving Atheist. The much touted “Southern Strategy” implemented by Nixon, ignores another, more insiduous strategy of the GOP, the “Suburban Strategy”.
There are many laws on the books prohibiting discrimination in housing and many overt tricks of the trade for real estate agents keeping blocks or areas “intact” do not work any more. At the same time, no president, GOP or Democrat, has aggressively enforced the housing laws compared for example, to the enforcement of school desegregation or literacy tests or poll taxes as means tests to vote. Because of that, while the workplace, school and other public places are more integrated, most neighborhoods remain segregated after so many years.
For those of us who remember Jim Crow and even lynching, we hear the same code words now as residents of New Orleans are relocated. At first, there was talk of moving them into various neighborhoods around the country until the complaints from the residents began. Now FEMA is working on a mega trailer park complex to house the displaced residents. This will keep them out of the ‘burbs.
We can never have an integrated society when we remain individually segregated. This country has never been able to accept the concept that the US government should or could or would have the right of picking your neighbor.
The Surburban Strategy has worked very well outside the South in the other Red States where there really are not enough minorities to really hate them. So you have to mobilize the people with the idea that the Feds may make them live in an area with enough minorities to make hating them worthwhile.

The “racism” discussion interests me too. I have been curious how people were using the word “racist” during the post-Katrina debacle etc. Being racist does not just mean burning crosses in white robes on the lawns of black people or lynching them. While that is the most virulent form of racism and something any of us can be morally outraged by, institutional racism is far more common and equally deadly for people of color.

When people consider the GOPers to be racist, they may in fact mean that the policies they put forward or the assumptions that they make about whan individual is like match up more with their own experiences. They structure workplaces etc. that take whiteness as the norm.